Will
there be any Barisan Nasional leader who would dare to raise at the Barisan
Nasional supreme council meeting tomorrow the hottest topic in the country
– the three-year failure of the Abdullah premiership to deliver its top
agenda to fight corruption?

______________
Media Statement by Lim Kit Siang
_________________

(Ipoh, Sunday) : The Barisan Nasional supreme
council will meet in Kuala Lumpur tomorrow where party component leaders
are expected to assess their preparations for the next general election.

All the heads of the 14
component parties were informed last week to attend the meeting but they
were not given any indication of its agenda.

Will there
be any Barisan Nasional leader who would dare to raise at the Barisan
Nasional supreme council meeting tomorrow the hottest topic in the country
–the Prime Minister’s three-year failure to deliver his top agenda to fight
corruption and how to restore public confidence that the Abdullah
premiership had not abandoned its anti-corruption pledge?

At his first Cabinet meeting
as Prime Minister on 5th November 2003, Abdullah directed
Ministers to set up a task force in their ministries to tighten procedures
and reduce bureaucracy in efforts to fight corruption. Nothing has been
heard of these Ministerial task forces.

At the post-Cabinet press
conference, Abdullah even spoke of his hope to achieve “zero corruption”
but admitted that it was going to be difficult.

Apart from the run-up to the
March 2004 general election campaign, Abdullah’s focus on his priority to
fight corruption had increasingly lessened with the passage of time and the
terms “zero corruption” or “zero tolerance for corruption” have disappeared
from his vocabulary.

Will there be any top Barisan
Nasional leader who would dare to tell Abdullah that after more than 40
months since he became Prime Minister, corruption in Malaysia has got worse
instead of better – and that this is from the feedback from the people and
not just from Transparency International’s (TI) Corruption Perception Index
(CPI) which fell seven places from 37th to 44th
ranking from 2003 to 2006 or the view of the former Prime Minister, Tun Dr.
Mahathir Mohamad who said that corruption had “surfaced above the table”.

One of Abdullah’s first
promises as Prime Minister was to make the Anti-Corruption Agency “strong”
under his leadership, vowing to make the ACA work faster and harder – but
the ACA is today at its lowest ebb in public esteem, credibility and
integrity in its 40-year-history, with the ACA director-general himself
accused of serious corruption by a former top ACA official!

Will there be any top Barisan
Nasional leader who would dare to bring to the notice of the Prime Minister
at the BN Supreme Council meeting that it is a total mockery of his earlier
pledge of zero tolerance for corruption to continue to have the ridiculous
and untenable situation where the ACA chief is investigated by the police
for corruption while the police and the Internal Security Deputy Minister,
Datuk Johari Baharom are investigated by the ACA for corruption!

Who would believe that justice
would be done in such a “I scratch your back, you scratch my back” scenario?

In the past four decades, the
ACA could at least strike fear among lowly government servants though not
the well-connected, high and mighty – but today, the ACA is regarded as a
object of ridicule by all and sundry when they see the ACA director-general
virtually on-the-run because of serious corruption allegations made against
him.

On Friday, Abdullah said that
“it’s difficult to get rid of (negative) perception…you can’t do that in
just a day, even a year” when referring to the inaugural Malaysian
Transparency Perception Survey 2007 of Transparency International Malaysia
(TI-M) that the five government agencies with perceived lowest integrity
and transparency (or deemed most corrupt) among the public are the police
(56 per cent), Road Transport Department (25 per cent), Customs and Excise
(19 per cent), Public Works (7 per cent) and Land Office (6 per cent).

Abdullah should know that we
are not talking about “a day, even a year” but over four years! After 40
months, there should be measurable improvement in public perception about
integrity of the public service, but the reverse is unfortunately the case.

Abdullah himself realizes the
importance of such measurable improvement of public perceptions about
government integrity, which was why he announced in May 2004 the National
Integrity Plan with the five-year objective to achieve for Malaysia at least
a ranking of No. 30 next year in the TI CPI 2008 from No. 37 in 2003.

Instead of improving our TI
CPI ranking, Malaysia’s placing had deteriorated and is now at No. 44 – and
likely to plunge further with the recent corruption scandals involving the
ACA director-general and Deputy Internal Security Minister and the equally
scandalous manner of dealing with them – with both allowed to continue in
their office when they should be asked to go on leave pending independent
investigations.

If the Barisan Nasional
Supreme Council meeting tomorrow dare not even touch on the greatest crisis
of confidence facing ACA in 40 years and the greatest crisis of integrity
facing the country in 50 years, and unable to come out with a new resolve
and action plan to declare an all-out war against corruption, then the
Barisan Nasional leaders will be proving how out of touch they are from the
deepest hopes and aspirations of the people.